In terms of plot, this is your basic “it’s what’s on the inside that counts”, moral-of-the-story story. Frankly, it’s a bit boring, but there are a couple of good words and phrases in here. One in particular is difficult, and I couldn’t figure it out just by looking at the definition, I had to go hunt around a bit: 钻出来 zuān chū lái. We know that 出来 means to “come out of”. But 钻? The first definition that came up when I looked was “diamond”, but that wasn’t the correct definition in this case. Secondly, it also means to “drill” or “bore”, which makes sense as a second definition of “diamond” – lots of diamond drill bits out there. But that still doesn’t work in context of the whole sentence. I finally ran a Baidu image search on the phrase, and there were lots of pictures of miners squeezing out of small spaces, children coming out of playground tunnels, workers coming out of manholes, and I realized that 钻出来 means to wiggle out of a space via a small opening. Imagine a secret agent crawling through an air duct; in Chinese, there’s a word for that, and that word is 钻.

I got this from Sina user Zifengling’s personal blog, in a post where she lists a few different easy stories, so if you wanna read some more on your own, head on over. I’ll probably translate another couple from there before too long.

In the forest there lived a little rabbit whose name was “Chouchou”. His eyes were red, like a pair of rubies. But his fur was grey, like he’d wiggled out of a furnace, and he felt himself to be very ugly, often hiding in his house alone.

Although he wasn’t nice to look at, he had an incomparably kind heart. When Little Monkey Lele’s home was burst apart by a flood, he had no house to return to. Chouchou let Lele live with him, and he divided up his favorite chocolate to give some to Lele to eat. Not only that, whoever had a headach, or got sick, with no money to buy medicine, he did everything he was able to do to help.

The days passed one by one, and Chouchou was still alone. One time, the forest’s most beautiful rabbit Meimei came looking for Chouchou to play, but Chouchou thought of himself as just too ugly, he couldn’t face seeing her. Meimei told Chouchou: “It’s not what’s on the outside that counts, the important thing is what’s on the inside.” Chouchou suddenly saw the light, he ran outside, and played with his friends to his heart’s content.

Beautiful story that holds such a valuable lesson. Good job of translating the story. It is short, simple, yet holds a lot of meaning that it will make it easy for people learning Chinese to understand and read. Keep it up, and please continue uploading more!

I have just started learning mandarin. I am doing conversation class and being taught pinyin and I was wondering whether there were any childrens story books which are written in chinese characters but also has the pinyin. I have a 1 year old chinese grandson and would like to be able to read to him. Can you help please.
grandson lives in Taipei and I will be visiting in April.

There are quite a few beautifully illustrated paper-bound books with both characters and Pinyin often available in small bookstores carrying Chinese books, notably in the San Francisco Bay Area. Titles from several publishers include abridged versions of Story of the Stone, Three Countries (San Guo 三国), Monkey King/Journey to the West, ghost stories, etc.

Hello! I am totally newby and even this text is tough for me. Can somebody explain me the difference between 森 and 森林? All dictionaries say that they both have meaning of forest. When should I use one and when prefer another?

Good question. The answer is, there is a difference, but it’s not much. Usually, when someone is talking about forests or forestry, you will see 森林。森 by itself means a lot of trees, emphasis perhaps on the density. What is the difference between woods and forest? Size maybe, density maybe, but they’re sort of interchangeable. I think that’s how this works.

They’re really the same. The important thing to know is that, in Chinese, you should use one character or two depending on the rest of the sentence. The reason for that is harder to explain, but it just depends whether you should use the one character or the two characters.

thanks. splitting up like that helps. I am an older lady just trying to learn to read only. The fact that this webpage has instant translation into meaning and hanyu pinyin saves me so much time and I can prove my tone as well. sadly I have a bad memory so although I can read the words this week, I forget them next One!!! plodding on. This is better than the books that only tell you either speaking words only or school test books. is there a website whereby I can buy books that have Chinese and hanyupinyin that are story books and not school books? despite living in Singapore, all the books cater for either adults conversational, or school books for students to pass tests on.boring. thanks

Hi Rena!
I am old too, and really appreciate these stories! I would recommend Cheng and Tsui’s college textbooks. They have a two-year course which integrates reading, speaking and writing and includes CD’s. They are in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. They call it “Integrated Chinese” The language school I studied Chinese at in Southern California uses them. If you are brave enough to work without a teacher, I think these would help you learn the hanzi and also speak some educated Mandarin. They have all their courses and READERS on line at http://www.chengandtsui.com. Check them out!

Look at this sentence this way:
Basic structure is 它会帮助， which means it（the rabbit）will help.
Next level of modification: 它都会进行帮助, which means The rabbit will provide assistance. (都会 – works as an auxiliary helping verb as in will also, or will always; 进行- to provide; 帮助 -as a noun help or assistance).
Last level of modification: 尽其所能 – is an idiom which means to exceeds one’s total ability. This idiom is used as an modifying expression for the verb 帮助. As a result, the final translation for the sentence: 它都会尽其所能进行帮助, it means (the rabbit 丑丑will exhaust all its power to help the homeless, or anyone who needs help.)

Thanks for this site, it’s great to have easy reading material in Chinese. But question: can you also provide pinyin? I’m focusing on my spoken Chinese before I start learning characters, and it’d be really nice to have some pinyin stuff to read. Either way, thanks a million.

I think there are converters out there where you input characters, and get the pinyin (or traditional characters) as output. Google translate does this as well. This way, you can create your own pinyin version from the texts.

The story is very nice. It has a lesson for life as well as a lesson for learning Chinese.
I’m a regular reader of stories published here. You guys have taught me a lot. I’m grateful to the team for their fruitful efforts.

I wanna thank you for the great job you are doing! I was looking for chinese short stories that could help me learn new chinese characters, and I have found what I was looking for! English is not my language (I’m italian, from Rome) but I know it well, so your translations are very useful. I have started just two weeks ago, but my main aim is not to speak but rather to be able in reading chinese poem and novel in original, so I’m studying mostly written chinese. All the best! Andrea Mucciolo

Hi! This website is very good, not only is it filled with a lot of learning materials but it is also created in a very user friendly manner(love the auto translation). I highly suggest to create an app with this kind of function.

I agree. add audio to this and it would be perfect.
the fact I can see the pinyin and meaning straight away helps my memory and tone and saves so much time. I spend more time repeating the reading. the comments at the bottom(not the silly ones) are very useful in understanding grammar and syntax. audio would help speed up my reading. I am an older lady and have just started tio learn this:) thanks everyone

This is terrific! I’m a native English speaker starting to learn Chinese. To be able to hover over the characters and see the pinyin has been nice.

One question: I’m an old school English learner in that I’ve done in-depth grammar study and can list tenses, parts of speech, and other things most people younger than I don’t care about. Are there any web sites out there that list things like tenses, parts of speech, and grammar “rules” for Chinese?

As an English learner, I’m trying to make connections and comparisons to facilitate my learning process, and everyone just seems to dump me in the middle of the language without the guideposts I need (hoping the analogy works).

Thank you, I’ve recently been shicreang for information about this subject for a long time and yours is the best I have came upon till now. But, what in regards to the bottom line? Are you positive concerning the source?|What i don’t realize is actually how you are now not really a lot more smartly-favored than you may be right now. You are so intelligent.

how did you made this popup on chinese characters.. i know it is a wordpress website and you are using chine-english dictionary plugin but that doesn’t have this popup option..can you help me please thank you.

大家好！I’m a native Chinese, and I like Kendra’s website! But it hasn’t updated for a long time. So I try to build another Chinese reading website with my language learning partner, Richard. It has recordings and detailed explanations. And we expect your feedback. So just have a try: http://www.whatstartwo.tech/Chinese/

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